Global Citizenship or Aesthetic Perspectives – ART 324

Papermaking? When I was looking at classes to take, I did not expect to see a class on papermaking. I didn’t even know that was a thing let alone a class offered at Longwood. I was unsure of what this class would entail but knew that I should take it for the experience and because it satisfied both a perspectives and honors course. During the first class, we went over the whole process of making handmade paper. And it was definitely a process, a smelly and messy one at that. Throughout the class, I made paper of all different materials like corn (and had a corn party), letters and envelopes, paper pants, and paper baseball cap and bat. This class was one of the hardest classes I have taken so far at Longwood. It required many hours of outside work that I had to fit into my schedule. While it was a hard class, I was able to see my hard work pay off through the art that I created and the paper that I created and was able to use.

For my final and favorite project in the class, I had to create a hat. I decided to do a baseball cap and bat. This project took a lot of work to complete from creating the presentation on the history and cultural impact of the baseball cap to creating the structure of the hat using only paper and papermaking methods that we learned in class. It took many nights working in the papermaking studio to create the final product of a Longwood baseball cap and bat. During the presentation for the final, we had a fashion show to showcase everyone’s hat. For my hat, I had my friend model the hat and bat. I will always remember her strutting her stuff down the runway modeling my paper hat!